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Beware of false education prophets. They come to you in teacher’s clothing, but inwardly they support the anti-working class bastards who want to destroy the teaching profession.

This is sort of a spin-off from my last blog post on homeschooling. I offended the sensibilities of a few of the admins of a teacher’s discussion group I was a part of on Facebook by being an outspoken critic of parents who choose to homeschool their kids. (Remember, my blog was not completely anti-homeschooling. It was anti-against the idea that a parent can call themselves an educator with no fucking credentials whatsoever.)

Well I’m a big ol’ meanie and my writing sucks. As one of the white, upper-middle class admins who was a marketing major (not an education major) explained to me, I’m “not a good fit” because I don’t hold hands and sing Kumbaya with homeschooling parents. I should be nice to them since they support teachers and school reform. Well Ms. Peggy Privilege, they actually don’t support us, since the whole idea of an unqualified parent homeschooling a child is completely anti-public education and anti-teacher at its core.

Peggy P, who comes across as a progressive and claims to hate those evil “corporatist deformers”, is justifying all the negative shit those evil corporatist deformers say about teachers by supporting unprofessional homeschooling! When you support homeschooling/unschooling, especially as someone who is supposed to be an advocate for public school teachers, you are giving a carte blanche of teacher hate to the very deformers you claim to despise. You are telling the deformers that since little Caligula can be educated in his home by his mom who barely has a high school diploma, what do we need teachers for? You are giving them an excuse to bash us politically, decrease our pay and dismantle our union. You are giving them permission to say our profession is worthless and to do away with us all together. Why give a trained, licensed and vetted professional teacher a salary when we can get little Nero’s mom to teach him for free?

And this little incident just solidifies my whole experience with public education and education advocacy when I first started the journey to become a teacher 15 years ago. Yes, education needs reform. There is over-testing and there are too many private companies involved in testing and tracking our children’s data, just to name two of the several problems with education in America. But there are a lot of phonies in this game.

I learned very early on in my teaching days not to say certain things in front of certain people; they will rat you out to an admin just so they can get their hands on precious per session* gigs. I also learned very early on that a good number of our union leadership, including my chapter leader and our wonderful union president talked out of both sides of their mouths–giving these rah-rah speeches railing against admins and bureaucrats, then turning around and making concessions with them. Let’s not forget, that we gave up the right to file grievances under the falsely militant Randi Weingarten. She was the union leader when many beloved neighborhood high schools across the city were dismantled. Now with the protests against Common Core, you get people like Peggy Privilege who dare call themselves a progressive reformer and teacher advocate, but do exactly as my union leadership did; act all rah-rah in front of teachers but then turn around and support people & policies that directly undermine our existence. As I see it, we will continue to be fooled by these false prophets of education reform.

*Per-session is the New York City Department of Education terminology for overtime.

With the demise of public education in this country–which includes under-funding by the government, overcrowded classrooms, ineffectual administrators, and private entities like testing companies having their filthy hands all over your children and their data–it is inevitable that the homeschool movement has grown exponentially over the last couple of years. Instead of trying to improve public education and how our politicians treat our schools, our teachers and our children, many have chosen to pull their children from school all together and educate them at home. Even with a less-than-perfect public education system, I believe it is still infinitely better than homeschooling your child.

This is not an anti-homeschooling blog. There are some instances when I believe homeschooling is appropriate, such as a child with really bad anxiety, a bully situation, an injury or remote living. Even in these situations, there is a right way to homeschool. This includes following professionally designed and state mandated curriculum. It includes professional oversight, with trained and state certified educators coming to your home to make sure your child is learning everything they would in a traditional school setting. And it includes opportunities for group learning with peers, in a format such as a homeschool collective.

And it’s not just fundamentalist Christians homeschooling their children either. Many people in the atheist, skeptic and non-believer communities are homeschooling their kids as well. I find this trend to be very troubling. As skeptics, we tend to be the first ones to condemn a non-vaxxing parent for using snake oil to treat their sick child instead of taking them to a doctor. We criticize parents who think a google search can replace a medical degree. We loathe parents that take medical care into their own hands and think they can replace the professional education and training of doctors, nurses and medical staff. Why don’t some of my fellow skeptics feel the same way about education and teaching?

Some of the excuses I’ve heard from my fellow skeptics for homeschooling their kids are just as ridiculous, if not more ridiculous, than reasons given by religious fundamentalists. The following are some reasons I’ve heard in favor of homeschooling followed by my personal commentary on why they are complete bullshit.

1)“I think I can do a better job than anybody when it comes to educating my children.”

No you can’t. Get over yourself. Teaching is NOT “so easy a caveman can do it.”

I don’t care if you are Neil Degrasse Tyson. Nothing takes the place of a licensed, professional, experienced, teacher in a public or private classroom who is surrounded by other professional educators, counselors and school support staff. I used to teach high school and I WOULD NEVER homeschool my kids. EVER. Do you think I am extensively trained in early childhood neurological development? How to teach reading to a child? Methods in teaching fractions? I can teach my child about the rise of dictatorial governments throughout Europe following World War I, but I think he would want to learn how to read and play in the sandbox first. If you think you can do at better job educating your child than hundreds of rigorously trained and vetted professionals, you are a self-important narcissist with a grandiose sense-of-self.

2)“I don’t like the curriculum being dictated by a school board. I want to make my own curriculum.”

Okay. That’s nice. You think as a teacher I liked everything in my social studies curriculum? Of course not. But most teachers know how to play with the curriculum and make it enjoyable for students to learn. Curriculum and standards are there for a reason; they ensure your children learn what they need to know to not only graduate, but to become well-rounded adults. Also, professionally trained educators are constantly designing and modifying curriculum to reflect the latest standards, methods and innovations in education. Curriculum is NOT designed by an army of Illuminati robots despite what you read in your FB parenting group.

If you’re wondering why we now have a generation of young adults who think vaccines cause autism and the holocaust never happened, blame the parents who think they know how to write curriculum simply because they shot a child out of their nutsack and/or vagina. Don’t like the curriculum? Supplement your child’s education with further materials and learning experiences. Have a meaningful conversation with them. Visit a museum. Give them experiences that will enrich their lives and grow their empathy, compassion and curiosity. Limiting the amount of people who they learn from, including peers, will only limit the amount of knowledge they acquire.

3)“I want to teach my children what I want them to learn, not what teachers and the government wants my kids to learn.”

A person gains culture and knowledge through interaction with others. I had teachers of all different personalities, political affiliations, backgrounds and cultures. I had mean teachers. I had nice teachers. I had sane teachers. I had crazy teachers. I had extremely intelligent teachers and a handful of clueless ones too. I learned from them all. I learned a variety of views and experiences.

I’m a non-believer. I’d like my son to be a non-believer as well. However, if he learns some religion and wants to be a bible thumping Christian, then I’m cool with that too. As long as he treats others with respect, kindness and compassion. Many homeschooling parents are afraid their little snowflakes will learn something evil or different at school from teachers or other children–views that might question a parent’s authority, beliefs, and fears. What if I told you not everyone has to think as you do, not even your child. They are not an extension of you. They are individuals with their own thoughts and agency. If you only want your child to know what you WANT them to know–to only know your views and your experiences–you are a self-important narcissist with a grandiose sense-of-self.

4)“I don’t want the school to call Children’s Services on me.”

This is a reason why some homeschooling/unschooling parents don’t want to send their kids to evil government schools. Teachers, counselors and other school staff are mandated reporters and are trained to identify signs of abuse and neglect, such as changes in behavior or physical appearance. Mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse can not be detected by school staff when a child does not attend a school. Homeschooling is a way abusers can get away with their crimes. It also prevents a child from escaping from an abusive situation, even if it’s just for six hours a day. And if you’re looking for a common thread here to connect to my other points, narcissistic personality disorder is a common feature of abusive parents.

5)“The schools are bad in our area.”

This is racist/classist code language for “I don’t want my little Caligula sharing a classroom with a poor and/or brown child.” What is interesting about this argument is that I see it put forth mostly by so-called progressives and leftists. If you’re so progressive, you should have no issues with your children learning from children who are different from them.

6)“My kid is not challenged at public school because he/she is too smart.”

Most parents who proclaim their kids are too smart and therefore bored at public school are completely full of shit. They are suffering from special snowflake syndrome; they think their special DNA and special homeschooling is producing the next child prodigy. These are the types of parents that take all the credit for their child’s hard work and achievements, since they were the only ones smart enough to recognize their child was a special snowflake whom is too good to share a classroom with the rest of the plebes.

Teachers do something now called differentiated instruction. We recognize that every child has specific strengths and weaknesses, and we individually tailor instruction just for your special snowflake! There are special programs for gifted and talented children. Your kid being a genius or a prodigy is still no excuse for you to solely educate them. Wouldn’t they become a better genius or prodigy if they learned from others besides yourself? Isolating them from the ideas of others because you think your child is better than everyone else is definitely not going to make them better than everyone else. But let’s admit, homeschooling is not about them. It’s about you and your ego.

7)“Public education is in shambles. If the schools were better, I’d send my kids and I can’t afford private school “

If you gave a damn about public education, you’ would still send your kids to school while fighting to change policies like other parents and professionals do. So let’s get to what this is really about: you. Homeschooling proves to the rest of your friends and family (and blog subscribers) what a super mom or dad you are by taking on a huge responsibility, while being smarter (and smuggier) than the average momma bear.

“Look at me–Look at me. Look how awesome I am homeschooling my special snowflake. I’m so much better than you! Nanny Nanny poo poo!

Isn’t it great when know-nothing bureaucrats decide who is competent at their job?

Part 1 of my blog series about the New York City Department of Education called, “It Takes A Potemkin Village”

In this multi-part series, I will attempt to illustrate and expose all that is wrong with the Department of Education under Michael Bloomberg and his successor, Bill DiBlasio. The problem is, I witnessed so much bullshit, corruption, failure and incompetence that I don’t know if I can put it all into writing. Some things are better left unsaid. Some people I can’t call out, no matter how much I want to because I don’t want to burn any bridges.

I taught in NYC public schools under former mayor Michael Bloomberg for just about seven years. Michael Bloomberg regarded himself as the savior of public education in New York City–he personally raised graduation rates, improved instruction and made schools safer. Any of us who worked in the system knew the DOE during the Bloomberg years was a farce–a fragile house of cards–one stiff breeze of truth would have blown the whole thing over. The New York City Department of Education is a modern-day Potemkin Village. However, we never had that stiff breeze of truth from any of the major news outlets. The most honest and forthright information you can get regarding the DOE was from frustrated teachers who blogged about their experiences. Now here I am, blogging about my experiences.

This first post deals with the over-abundance of administrators and bureaucrats in the NYC DOE.‌

One major achievement Bloomberg claimed to accomplish during his tenure as mayor of New York City and leader of its public schools was the elimination of bureaucracy. One of the bureaucratic elements of the NYC DOE were the districts and community school boards. Michael Bloomberg bragged how disbanding them was such a difficult task, one he managed to pull-off in a mere few months. This was all Bloomberg smoke and mirrors. The districts still exist. However, instead of independent community school boards overseeing districts, they are headed by overpaid bureaucrats who blindly carry-out the Bloomberg agenda.

And what is the Bloomberg agenda? Get rid of as many teachers as you can. Overcrowd classrooms. Close down schools that have large union chapters. Give private consulting groups money that could be used directly in classrooms. Hire a ton of incompetent administrators with very little classroom experience, but who have a panache for fudging numbers, kissing ass and loathing teachers. Have these incompetent administrators oversee teachers, tell them how to teach (when they don’t know how to themselves) and harass them when they are too experienced old and over-paid–or don’t teach according to the party line and the Little Red Book.

The same rules do not apply for the administrators and bureaucrats as they do for teachers. As a student or administrator in the DOE, if you are persistently failing, you get rewarded and promoted. As a teacher, you get lambasted, railroaded and eventually terminated. According to the Bloomberg agenda, teachers are everything that is wrong and they are all assumed incompetent until proven otherwise. Administrators are rarely held accountable for their incompetency and poor performance records. One example of this was when one of my former assistant principals was promoted to principal at a nearby school. Apparently, being second in command at a failing school guarantees you a promotion in the DOE. As a principal, his school received two D ratings and was slated for closure. Instead of being demoted, this person was given a promotion and is currently a network leader. Network leaders can garner a salary of between 111,000-170,000 dollars a year. They have very little contact with children and probably couldn’t teach a class to save their lives. I’m sure he’s not the only network leader in the DOE who has a less-than-stellar performance record as an educator, and is now bleeding the taxpayers of New York City dry with an over-inflated salary.

Gone and forgotten are the educator-principals who taught for 20 plus years in the classroom before becoming a leader of other teachers. Gone are the subject department heads, masters of their craft who would mentor and support teachers and who knew their damn subject! They are being replaced by young, fresh-faced, business majors who hate teachers and working-class people–and think Germany bombed Pearl Harbor. This is what is telling me how to teach history. They apparently make double than the average teacher yet they know less and work even lesser. This went on for years. The old guard would move on or retire and they were replaced by someone more willing to do the party’s bidding. It seemed like the number of administrators grew exponentially while I worked at the DOE. Where was the NY Post , The Daily News or The NY Times to expose this crime of money being siphoned away from kids? Exactly. They were bought and paid for by the party too.

One incompetent administrator I could not avoid during my time at the DOE was my third department chair in less than a year. For the purposes of this article, I will call her Gertrude. The following passage is a personal account of my interactions with Gertrude. It is part of a larger personal reflection on my dealings with several of my former administrators. Although I have many funny anecdotes to share, I chose the following excerpt because I feel it highlights the anger and frustration a teacher feels when she believes there is a target on her back. It has been edited from its original version.

Honest and intelligent administrators are few and far between in the DOE and the mayor prefers it this way. The grooming of this breed of administrator mostly takes place at the Leadership Academy, started by Joel Klein to groom principals for the hundreds of new schools that were created in NYC from 2002-2012. A fellow colleague of mine was accepted into the academy and I was very happy for him and the DOE, because they were getting a stand-up, genuinely nice and honest human being to be a principal. He returned to the classroom only after a few months at the Leadership Academy. He refused to discuss his experiences there and did not tell me why he quit for the exception of a simple, “it wasn’t for me”. He acted like a returning soldier from Vietnam, complete with the 100 yard stare, refusing to face the horrors and atrocities he witnessed while doing his tour. I’ve heard rumors about what is taught behind the walls of the leadership academy–everything from how to union bust to how to get rid of a senior teacher. I do not know for sure, but the fact that an honest educator who would sympathize with teachers left only after a few months, speaks volumes to me.

My first department chairperson, who liked to play solitaire all day in his office, left at the beginning of my fourth year unexpectedly. The position was filled by a teacher from our ranks. She was honest,empathetic and hands-on–she only lasted about eight months. She was not the type of administrator the DOE wants. She was one of the few administrators I’ve encountered that was pro-active about discipline. Apparently, she was being pressured to give one of the senior teachers in our department (one who was outspoken about NOT towing the party-line) a U rating, which she refused.

The third AP they brought in to head our department, (Gertrude) was one of my least favorite people I have ever dealt with in the DOE. She was a former college counselor and was a good ten years removed from the classroom. I had high expectations for her at first, but they quickly fizzled out when I realized the woman had the intelligence level equivalent to a bag of charcoal. She knew nothing about teaching, the curriculum, or anything about history. One time she asked me what I was up to in the curriculum. When I told her “The Renaissance”, she went on a tirade saying that was not in the Global 2 curriculum. Mind you, I had been teaching global for almost five years and knew the two-year Global curriculum from front to back, without using the curriculum guides. She dug through her filing cabinet for five minutes looking for the calendar of lessons. She then handed it to me and asked me to “show her” where it said I should teach the Renaissance; it was on the first page. She didn’t apologize or admit she was wrong.

During a professional development session, she stated the civil rights act occurred in 1967. I was mainly a Global teacher, but even I knew the civil rights act was 1964. Another time, she tried to tell me that my lesson wasn’t differentiated instruction–which it was. I verified this with several of my colleagues because Gertrude has me believing for a second that I was wrong. According to her, differentiated instruction was station learning–you know, stuff that you see in a second grade classroom that she wanted me to implement in a 9th grade Global History class that was only 45 minutes long. Station learning is kind of hard to pull off when you have 5 classes in 4 different rooms and apathetic teenagers who don’t enjoy being treated like second-graders. I finally got her to admit that my lesson was indeed differentiated instruction and that station learning was impossible to execute given the circumstances of our school, our budget and our students.

It seemed like Gertrude had it in for me. I do not know for sure, but I think it was because I was more intelligent and skilled than her, and she felt threatened by that. A few of my colleagues suggested she had a crush on me. Whatever the reason, at one point during her time as my department chair, she decided to target me. Everyone who has observed me has said I was an excellent teacher, except for Gertrude and an overpaid educational consultant from (Shiny Horizons)*. During one of Gertrude’s observations, a girl had her hat on. Rather than harping on the girl’s hat, I wanted to move on with the lesson. I think she was pissed off when one of my students said “Miss, she(Gertrude) looks like she has downs syndrome” and I didn’t reprimand the student for that comment–I just wanted to get the observation lesson over with and deal with the child at another time I thought was appropriate.

She also came in for a pop-in observation for a class I was teaching out of license, and had the nerve to say I was unprepared for the lesson. She also reprimanded me for drinking water during a lesson!!!!!! The best was when Gertrude came into one of the Sweat-hog rooms we had for at-risk students. When she walked into this classroom unannounced (one of many occasions), one of my students said “Who the fuck is this bitch coming into our room without introducing herself??? How fucking rude”. If a high-risk student with academic and mental issues can pick up on this woman’s animosity and unprofessionalism, what does that say about how the DOE vets its administrators?

Then came the blow-up in Gertrude’s office after she pulled her bullshit with me. I was known as one of the most easy-going people in the building who everyone got along with but I completely lost it one day. I couldn’t believe this moron was telling me how to teach, and coming unannounced and trying to “get me”. Let me tell you right now, besides giving birth to my son, yelling at Gertrude was one of the best feelings I EVER experienced. She deserved it and I have no regrets whatsoever.

After this last incident, I employed the help of the teaching center person in our building, (Brenda). I had heard through the grapevine that our principal wasn’t really fond of Gertrude. Brenda went to talk to my principal about the blow-up, and to see if I was on any hit list. Brenda assured me I wasn’t, and told me that my principal was actually shocked to hear I was the one who screamed at Gertrude. I saw my principal talking to my AP later on and from that day forward, Gertrude NEVER came into my classroom unannounced for the rest of my time there. I stood up for myself and I think that made all the difference.

Gertrude’s ineptitude as a leader and an educator was evident to all, and she steadily lost the respect of every member of our department. One time she mandated a horrible regents prep lesson across the department. One that she supposedly developed with Shiny Horizons. She was going to police her teachers that day, to make sure we were teaching it in our classes. Three of us did it her way and I was one of them. I just didn’t want to hear her bitch and I was already on her personal shit list. The next day, she puts a very insulting memo in our mailboxes. In this memo, she lambasted the teachers of the department for not following the mandated lesson. To add insult to injury, she gave kudos to another colleague and I for following the curriculum (She could have kept her ‘kudos” and shoved them up her fucking ass for all I cared) and put her favorite teacher in the department on a pedestal, saying that we should all visit her classroom to see how a real teacher does it. What kind of leader pits teacher against teacher?

This is where teachers are insulted and get the most upset. We go to school and become experts in our subjects. We pass a myriad of exams to prove we are competent to teach, only to be dictated by overpaid administrators, bureaucrats and education consultants on how we should deliver our material. Teachers do not have a problem with teaching curriculum, but we want to teach it our way and the way that best suits our charges. A great teacher knows you can not have group work every single day. A great teacher knows that you must mix things up on a daily basis depending on the kids, the material and the objective. A great teacher can take curriculum and turn it into great lessons and great units, without being told how to do it by non-Pedagogues. Bloomberg and the rest of the sycophants at the DOE do not believe this is so. They want to dictate HOW you teach your class, forcing down our throats a one-size-fits all approach to teaching and learning that only sets up the children for continuous failure.

*(Shiny Horizons is what I call one of two private consulting groups who was receiving tax payer money to instruct us on how to teach. This of course is a pseudonym.)

I’m not quite sure what to focus on when I write my next part of this series, but it will either be more administrative follies, especially when dealing with student discipline , or the role of private consulting groups in the DOE. Please share any of your experiences; it will help others feel like they are not alone in this huge system.

When I heard that you were going to debate the creationist Ken Ham, on his creationist territory, I didn’t think it was the greatest idea. I was planning to watch, but I didn’t think anything positive could be gained from debating people who will never change their minds, no matter how much evidence you present to them. You completely changed my mind.

As a former teacher, the best part of your presentation last night (and there were many good parts) was the rallying call for evidence-based, science education in public schools. You spoke to everyone and implored them the importance of keeping pseudo-science and religion out of our public schools. You stressed the value of always asking questions, always searching for new discoveries and never accepting one final answer as the end all truth; an evidence-based science education curriculum is what will enable America to ask the important questions, to continue making great discoveries and to always keep an open mind.

Thank you for not making this debate a fruitless effort. Your eloquence is beyond measure. The reasons why this debate was positive for science and science education was YOU!